Questions for Democrats From Me and The Times

To get an Op-Ed piece published in The New York Times you have to give the paper a three-business-day window to review your submission. The Times says it will contact you if they plan to use it. Otherwise, you’re free to publish it anywhere else it might be deemed worthy.

Last Friday night I emailed to The Times 10 questions that should be asked of each Democratic presidential hopeful during next week’s debates. Apparently, great minds think alike, because The Times had been working on a similarly themed idea which it unveiled Wednesday. The Times formulated 18 questions to which 21 candidates provided video responses (https://nyti.ms/2NbBe1Z). 

Having not heard back from The Times by Wednesday night, herewith are my questions (since expanded to a dozen): 

1. Will you support the eventual Democratic party nominee and not run a third party candidacy?

2. What will be your first five executive orders upon taking office?

3. Given what we now know about Donald Trump’s activities before and after the 2016 election, would you support a criminal prosecution of Donald Trump?

4. What action by the Trump administration has most enraged you and how would you counteract it?

5. If the Senate remains in Republican control, how would you counter Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s stranglehold on legislative affairs moving forward?

6. What steps would you take to improve our trade position vis-a-vis China?

7. How would you stem the flow of undocumented immigrants across our southern border?

8. Which country or entity or concept is America’s number one enemy today and in the future?

9. Should the Palestinians have their own state or should they become citizens of Israel and other Middle Eastern states where they reside?

10. What is your position on the impact and viability of technology companies, banks and investment houses that have grown “too big to fail.” Should they be broken up or more intensely regulated? 

11. Are some Afro-Americans entitled to reparations? How would you define reparations?

12. What steps would you take to improve health care?

For those who chose not to click on the link to The Times feature, here’s a list of its questions (added benefit: each question is linked to the candidate responses). You decide whose queries, mine or The Times, were more incisive. 

1. In an ideal world, would anyone own handguns?

2. Would your focus be improving the Affordable Care Act or replacing it with single payer?

3. Do you think it’s possible for the next president to stop climate change?

4. Do you think Israel meets international standards of human rights?

5. Who is your hero, and why?

6. Would there be American troops in Afghanistan at the end of your first term?

7. How many hours of sleep do you get a night?

8. Do you think illegal immigration is a major problem in the United States?

9. Where would you go on your first international trip as president?

10. Describe the last time you were embarrassed. Why?

11. Do you think President Trump has committed crimes in office?

12. Do you support or oppose the death penalty?

13. Should tech giants like Facebook, Amazon and Google be broken up?

14. Are you open to expanding the size of the Supreme Court?

15. When did your family first arrive in the United States, and how?

16. What is your comfort food on the campaign trail?

17. What do you do to relax?

18. Does anyone deserve to have a billion dollars?

My Inner Lumberjack, SleepIQ and Does Hollywood Think the Bible Is a True Story?

You probably wouldn’t assume it by looking at me but I have a streak of lumberjack in me. It’s not just the flannel and chamois shirts I favor once the air becomes nippy.

My constant gardener, aka Gilda, loves her compost and mulch, resulting in many an afternoon spent by yours truly collecting fallen leaves to be pulverized in my Sears Craftsman Leafwacker Plus. One day last week after chopping up 15 bags of leaves I filled another 18 black, 40-gallon Hefty bags with the discards from maple and oak trees. I shredded those leaves this afternoon. 

A few years ago I bought the Leafwacker from a Craig’s List poster in New Jersey for $25 and have enjoyed the annual autumn ritual of mulching leaves. It’s a lot less laborious than my two decades-ago lumberjack toil of collecting, chainsawing, chopping and stacking tree limbs culled from the roadside for our wood-burning stove.

Anyway, there’s a back-to-nature type of pleasure I get from this exercise, which almost got stopped in its tracks this year. Shortly after starting last week, the Leafwacker ground to a halt. I thought it might have shorted out on the foil wrapper of a Twix bar that had infiltrated the leaves. I took the machine to the Sears repair shop. They said it would cost some $125 with no guarantee they could fix it. 

I passed on that “reassuring” estimate and turned to Google. Sure enough, there were several posts about sudden stoppages of a Leafwacker, including one suggestion to hit the reset button on the bottom of the inverted machine. Who knew there was a reset button? Again sure enough, the Leafwacker sprung back to life. A short while later the mulcher stopped again in mid-stream but this time I knew what to do. Hooray for technology. 

Sleep Tight: The good people who sold us our Sleep Number bed called over the weekend to ask how we’ve been slumbering and to suggest a technology add-on. With SleepIQ, we’d be able to monitor things like how many times we got up in the middle of the night, how often we tossed and turned, our heart rate and breathing rate, and how our diet affected our sleep. All this for $499.

I respectfully declined, though I would have liked to find out how SleepIQ distinguishes normal tossing and turning from the bodily movements of two people making love. 

Here’s another question I’d like the answer to—when Gilda and I recently went to the movies, we saw a preview for "50 to 1," what was said to be “based on the true story of horse racing legend Mine That Bird.”

Okay, lots of pictures these days originate from “true” stories. The next preview was for “Exodus: Gods and Kings.” It did not say the movie was based on a true story. I’m guessing the producers did not want to take sides on whether the Bible was fact- or myth-based, but I’d like to know their reasoning. 

Spoiler Alert: The movie we saw was “Gone Girl,” which contained one of the best puns I’ve heard recently. It concerned Amy Dunne who masquerades her own disappearance and possible murder. In describing missing person Amy, a TV personality said she “forged a successful career in journalism.” As the British say, brilliant.

From Ottynia to Perth

I had fully intended to finish up my tax returns today but two early morning emails derailed that plan. By “early morning” I mean shortly after midnight, not that I was awake to read them when they descended from the cloud into my mailbox.

I got up at a reasonable hour this morning, slightly before 8. That is, my eyes opened for good, though I did not get out of bed for good for nearly another two hours. I blame email. As most of you probably do, I check email first thing in the A.M. Never know when Linda the Realtor might have an ASAP project for me to complete (which she did just past noon which deferred my writing this post until evening). 

In quick succession I read two emails that opened up links with my past. The first was from Lisa, a Denver resident searching for family roots in Ottynia, the hometown village of my father in what is now western Ukraine. She had found me several days earlier after googling Ottynia. My blog came up at the top of her Google search. As she wrote, “Now that’s optimization.”

After reading and responding to her second email this morning, we communicated the old fashioned way, by phone for half an hour. Just prior to that call I answered the other email that jolted me this morning, from a distant cousin in Minneapolis who I had last seen about 20 to 25 years ago when I was making annual visits to the Twin Cities. A year ago I wrote about his father’s surreptitious entry into the United States in the early 1920s and his subsequent flight to Minnesota to evade being picked up as an illegal alien. Like Lisa, David had read about Ottynia in my blog.

So I began reading old posts about Ottynia, thrust forward also by reports of wreckage from Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 possibly being spotted some 1,500 miles west of Perth, Australia. There in one of the blogs from October 2009 was a promise to relate a story about my father and mother’s visit to Perth.

One of the hallmarks of my parents’ 53-year marriage was their open expression. In other words, they argued, sometimes in earnest, sometimes in jest. My father never let my mother forget that his first love was Dora, a woman he met in Danzig prior to World War II. Though he asked her to come with him to America in 1939, as an only child she chose to go with her parents to Australia. Sadly, within six months of arriving Down Under, her parents died. She tried to reconnect with my father, but could not. 

My father married my mother in 1942. Whenever my father would tease her about his first love, she would respond she was ready to buy him a one-way ticket to Australia. 

My father had many friends who left Poland in 1939. They were spread around the world. They agreed to meet in Israel in 1989, but one of them, a doctor in Sydney, Australia, had cataract surgery and could not travel. So my parents decided to visit him. As could be expected, before the trip they argued about something, my father mentioned Dora and my mother decided to call his bluff. Why don’t you put an ad in the Australian version of The Jewish Week and see if she responds, she suggested.

He had his doctor friend place an ad, asking anyone who knows a Dora who came to Australia in 1939 to contact him. A few days later, a friend sitting in Dora’s kitchen in Perth saw the ad. When Dora’s letter reached our home, it was hard to say who was more startled. Dora had married, had two sons, but was widowed in 1955. Hardly a day goes by, she wrote, that she did not think of my father.

Suddenly, a “simple” trip to Sydney was transformed into a romantic adventure. Her bluff called, my mother had no choice but to accompany her husband on his transcontinental trip back down lover’s lane in Perth. Indeed, whenever Dora was alone with him, she wrapped her arms around my father and said she would be there for him if he ever were single again. 

Ah, but my dad’s innate conservative morals thwarted any thoughts of seduction. Dora had told him she had boyfriends after her husband’s death. His ardor cooled, he returned to America never again threatening to run off to Australia. 

Snow Day Thoughts: LinkedIn, Water Pipelines, and Baseball Sans Derek Jeter

They’re coming out of the woodwork. Like characters from The Walking Dead, people I hadn’t heard from in years have been sending congratulations messages and asking to re-connect, all because I failed to update my LinkedIn profile. So, they all think I am celebrating my third year anniversary at Green Retail Decisions as director of industry relations when in truth I stopped consulting for them last summer. Still, it’s nice to know some people still care enough about me to want to keep the relationship alive ... 

I cleared 11 inches of snow from the driveway and walkway around noon today. Thank god I bought that snowblower a few years ago. Waiting for the second round of snow from this storm …

Perhaps you’ve thought of this idea as well: If we have the capability to build the Keystone XL (crude oil) Pipeline from Canada to Nebraska, a distance of 1,179 miles, with the hope there won’t be any negative environmental impacts from leaks or spills, why can’t we build a water pipeline to take the inevitable runoff of spring flooding along the Mississippi River in Iowa and points south to the parched Texas landscape, a distance of about 1,000 miles? Or maybe divert flood waters from the Missouri River to Denver? Sure, each would be a massive project, but would provide jobs and much needed drought relief. Plus, we wouldn’t have a catastrophe if a few gallons of water leaked along the way. 

I just did a Google search and found several entries outlining the difficulties of advancing these projects, from structural, financial and, even more importantly, political perspectives.  We had massive public works projects during the Depression and the building of the interstate highway system beginning in the 1950s. But it is doubtful all the stars would line up to implement any such tasks in this day and age ...

O Captain! My Captain! I don’t mean to trivialize Walt Whitman’s tribute poem to the assassinated Abraham Lincoln, but one of the first thoughts I had upon hearing of Derek Jeter’s pending retirement from the NY Yankees at the conclusion of the 2014 season was the opening lines of the poet’s elegy:

O Captain! My Captain! our fearful trip is done;

The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won;

Nobody can play forever. Jeter’s departure, along with that of Robinson Cano in free agency and the joint retirements of Mariano Rivera and Andy Pettitte in 2013, will leave no internally grown superstar among pinstriped players. What a pity. The long line of Yankee greats, that started with Gehrig and wound its way through DiMaggio, Berra, Mantle, Ford, Howard, Guidry, Munson, Mattingly, Posada, Pettitte, Rivera and Jeter appears to be, at best, in hiatus.

My hope, probably shared by anyone who has appreciated Jeter’s professionalism, is that injury will not mar his final trip around the basepaths of major league baseball. Let’s hope that just as Mariano enjoyed a splendid comeback year after his injury-shortened 2012 season, Jeter will play to the level of 2012 when he led the American League in hits with 216.   

The Domestication of Murray and Other Meshugas

When asked over the years if I cooked, Gilda usually replied, nine times out of ten I could boil water—maybe. I would respond, Gilda and I had a mutual-partition-of-domestic-labor-pact: she would cook, we’d both enjoy the gourmet meals she prepared, I would be in charge of setting the table and cleaning up the dishes and pots and pans. 

The arrangement worked fairly well from my perspective for 40 years, but change is afoot. Given Gilda’s work schedule which includes waking up at 5:18 am, I have been conscripted into the meal preparation corps. Tuesday night was our first dinner at Maison Murray, Cucina Murray, Bistro Murray or just plain Murray’s Kitchen. We dined on broiled salmon, baked potatoes garnished with butter and sour cream, and steamed broccoli. We don’t eat dessert, as a rule, unless you count after-dinner pills as a treat. 

Tonight’s pre-tennis menu includes cheese blintzes and salad. 

Don’t think my cooking exploits know no bounds. I’m very much the neophyte chef in the kitchen, though I’ve put together a list of some dozen meals to rotate into our Monday through Thursday repasts. I’m writing down detailed instructions for each dish, making sure we have a balance of protein, starch and vegetable. 

This is a brave step for me, though not entirely a new world as I cooked for myself while in graduate school at Syracuse University. In my garret of an apartment in an old Victorian-style house on East Genesee Street, I would cook tuna casserole, meat loaf and anything else that would fit into a toaster oven. I also learned to drink beer, really drink beer. My friend and classmate Steve Kreinberg introduced me to Lum’s, a chain of family restaurants whose signature dish was hot dogs cooked in beer. I preferred their basket of fried shrimp, but what made a visit to Lum’s special was the frosted mugs used to serve the beer. To commemorate those days I keep a few mugs frosting away in the freezer. 

This Is Crazy: I'm always amused when gentiles try to speak Yiddish. They never get the intonation right. For example, instead of a guttural, growly “chutzpah” that conveys the indignant reproach of the speaker, it usually comes out as a soft “hutzpah,” a kind of “oh, really” quality to the put down.

Incorporating Yiddish in one’s writing isn't easy, either. Take Maureen Dowd’s attempt in her column last Sunday for The NY Times. Analyzing Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential prospects, Dowd wrote, “Her challenge is to get into the future and stay there, adding fresh people and perspectives and leaving the Clinton mishegoss (italics added) and cheesiness in the past.”

When I first read this I chuckled. I wondered how many non-Jews would realize she meant to say “meshugas,” the Yiddish word for craziness. I was all set to lambaste her for failing to correctly spell meshugas when I decided to do some checking and came across the following 2009 article from The Jewish Daily Forward (http://forward.com/articles/116716/clearing-up-the-meshugas-for-maureen-dowd-and-will/). 

For those not willing to jump on the link, here’s a precis: It seems Dowd had previously used the meshugas spelling but was chastened by Times columnist and wordsmith William Safire that the correct spelling was mishegoss. Safire might have been the only one to believe that, but his stature was sufficient for Dowd to follow his example. 

The lesson to be learned from this—before criticizing, it’s a good idea to check as many facts as possible. Thank you Google and the Internet.

Mr. Lucky: I consider myself fortunate not to be in school these days, not when technology enables teachers to monitor a student’s reading and study habits (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/09/technology/coursesmart-e-textbooks-track-students-progress-for-teachers.html?ref=education&_r=0). From high school on, I was a lousy student. I received good grades in subjects I was interested in, but not because I read the course material. I was just hard-wired, or lucky enough, to know the answers in subjects ranging from history to English to elementary sciences. 

I’d be in real trouble if my grades depended on whether I was reading the assignments. 

For Shame: There’s no doubt Margaret Thatcher was a polarizing figure, not just in British politics but throughout the world, as well. I find it shameful, however, that while media baron Rupert Murdoch praised the former prime minister for being "undoubtedly one of the most important figures in the 20th century. I found her attitude an inspiration in my business life,” he allowed his British tabloid paper, The Sun, to trumpet her passing with the following headline: “Maggie Dead In Bed At Ritz.” 

How tawdry. How lacking in respect. How shameful.

A Mother's Vindication and Muscle Bound

A Mother’s Vindication: Gilda doesn’t normally read the sports pages, but she sent me an article the other day that must have found its way onto the most emailed list of The NY Times. The article recounted how many parents, including professional and retired athletes, are reticent about allowing their children to play football because of the fear of injury, especially head injury. 

“How nice that people are coming to these conclusions about football 30 years after I said I would never allow Dan to play!,” she wrote in a note to Dan and me accompanying the article (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/21/sports/football/with-fears-about-safety-football-faces-uncertain-evolution.html?_r=1). 

Can’t say I fault her for crowing and being clairvoyant.

The article even quoted Hall of Fame quarterback and football analyst Terry Bradshaw predicting within 10 years football would be “eclipsed in popularity by soccer and other sports.”

Of course, playing soccer is no guarantee a child will be injury-free and mothers will be worry-free. Case in point: Dan played on a travel all-star soccer team from the time he was nine years old. Except for most of that first fall season, he was the goalie, which was rather startling as he was a less than determined player when he played defense. You might say he was the most accommodating defender there ever was. If the ball was between him and a player from another team, his politeness gene kicked in. He deferred to his foe, giving him free rein to kick the ball to the goal. 

As soon as Dan was shifted to goalkeeper late that first all-star season, he underwent a transformation. Perhaps it was realizing he was the last line of defense, Dan became downright protective of his space. He would fling his body towards the ball, even running headlong into an advancing forward. He did not give up goals lightly. One weekend tournament he played four games before the coaches realized he had fractured his wrist. His team won all four of those games.

At another tournament when Dan was around 12, this one attended by Gilda as well, an opponent took a shot from about 30 feet away. Screened on the play, Dan nevertheless made the save—with his face. Down he went. Play stopped as his teammates and coaches gathered around his dazed body. 

Standing on the sidelines, Gilda’s maternal instincts took over. She started to rush onto the field, but was restrained by the referees. To no avail she cried out, “What kind of game is this where a parent can’t run to her injured son?” Dan recovered soon enough and completed the game. His team won that one, too.

Muscle Bound: Ever been to Muscle Beach, that stretch of surf and sand in Venice, Calif., made famous by body builders including Arnold Schwarzenegger? I have, though a look at my frame would not immediately conjure up images of muscles. The closest I’ve come to enjoying muscles is partaking some steamed mussels along with a basket of crisp French fries, otherwise known as moules et frites. But I digress.

A front page article in The Times the other day brought to light the concerns of Venetians that their honky-tonk world is under threat. Seems Google, and even the ex-guv Arnold himself, might be buying up properties to reshape the terrain away from street people, body builders, drop-outs, skateboarders, medical marijuana dispensaries and the homeless (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/20/us/bodybuilders-flinch-at-googles-venice-beach-incursion.html). 

Gilda and I have been to Venice Beach, just down the way from Santa Monica, several times, but it was only during our most recent trip to California, last November as part of the time we spent in Los Angeles for our nephew Ari’s wedding, that we opted to stay at the Venice Beach Suites and Hotel, in a third floor room overlooking the boardwalk and beach. It was lovely watching the setting sun from our window. I wouldn’t say we were fearful of the street people. Cautious would be a better word. We’re generally adventurous tourists, but quite content to say “been there, done that” once the experience is over. I doubt we will rebook a room on Venice Beach.

Chock Full of News

Why do we need Federal oversight agencies? If you believe in less government, if you believe corporations will do the right thing to protect the public or the environment without government pressure, if you believe in the Tooth Fairy, then you believe government programs like OSHA, FDA, FTC, SEC, and EPA, are wastes of taxpayer money.

Exhibit A: The Ford Motor Co. had a problem. Its most popular vehicle model, indeed, the most popular vehicle sold in America, the F-150 series of pickup trucks, suffered from premature ejaculation of its airbags. Embarrassing, but not something Ford wanted to publicize. We are, after all, talking about a macho-man truck. So Ford was willing to quietly recall nearly 150,000 of the touchy trucks.

Not so fast, said the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Unexpected deployment of an airbag can injure drivers, or cause them to lose control of a vehicle. The NHTSA strong-armed Ford into announcing a 1.2 million vehicle recall.

No doubt those extra 1.05 million F-150 drivers, along with everyone else on the road with them, will feel a lot safer once the safety improvements are made. I know I will.

Thank You, Uncle Sam.


Short-sighted on Wall Street: The money boys live for the here and now. They denigrate executives who build for the long term. For years they chastised Jeff Bezos for investing millions of dollars instead of reaping earlier profits from Amazon.com. They’ve blasted Jim Sinegal of Costco and Howard Schultz of Starbucks for granting benefits and wage scales not commonly provided to rank and file employees, ignoring their reasoning that happy employees are ambassadors of good will and produce more sustained profit in the long run.

Now Wall Street is attacking Google for investing too much in technology and for rewarding its employees too lavishly. Wall Street is like a dog that won’t let go.


Flipped Off: I admit it. As soon as I became a new grandfather, actually even before Finley’s birth, I raced to Costco and bought a Flip video camera. I would document all of Finley’s moves.

Well, we used it to record his bris (ritual circumcision) 17 months ago, but haven’t touched it since. In explaining Cisco’s decision to get out of the Flip business it bought in 2009, analysts theorized that smart phones have interdicted much of the market for digital video, just as they’ve co-opted sales of wristwatches, GPS systems, alarm clocks, digital cameras, newspapers, and e-readers.

I still think it’s a cute device, but clearly one now behind its time.


Dodger Blue Runs Red: Interesting to hear former LA Dodgers manager and current ambassador at large for Major League Baseball Tommy Lasorda comment on the violence at a recent Dodgers-San Francisco Giants game (a Giants fan was attacked outside Dodger Stadium and has been in an induced coma for about two weeks).

Lasorda said it’s okay to want to figuratively bash the opposition on the playing field, but beating someone up off the field is a no-no.

Very true, especially when one considers that almost all on-field baseball related scrimmages are mostly shoving matches, with nary a punch thrown that lands squarely on a jaw or any other body part.

One Dodgers-Giants brawl, however, was a nasty affair 46 years ago, with lots of blood involving some of the game’s biggest stars of the time—Sandy Koufax, Willie Mays, Juan Marichal and Johnny Roseboro. If you’re interested, here’s a link: http://miscbaseball.wordpress.com/2009/07/21/the-fight-between-juan-marichal-and-john-roseboro/


Storm Trooper Black: I never really took a fancy to Hugo Boss clothing. Today I learned why my instincts were correct.

It wasn’t a secret, but I heard on NPR that Hugo Boss designed the black Nazi SS uniforms.

It gives another meaning to the term, “dressed to kill.”

I know lots of German companies aided the Nazi war effort, by choice or design. Companies like Mercedes Benz, Krups, Braun. Even IBM. Others may wear Hugo Boss. My skin would crawl.


Fat Wrists: I’ve noted before I’m self-conscious about my lankiness, despite my eternal gratitude that being underweight saved me from conscription into the military during the height of the Vietnam War.

Now comes another reason to celebrate being rail thin as a child. Seems a child’s wrist can be an indicator of adult heart disease. The larger the wrist bone the greater the risk, according to a study by Sapienza University of Rome.

If this study is correct, I’m going to be blogging for a long, long time.


The Gig Is Up: Paul Marcarelli’s career as the Verizon “Can you hear me now guy” has ended. The nine-year campaign is being replaced, giving Marcarelli an opportunity to talk about what it’s like to be pidgeon-holed as a corporate spokesperson. Among his more amusing comments, as reported in The Atlantic: “At his grandmother's funeral, a family friend whispered, ‘Can you hear me now?’, as her body was being lowered into the ground.


Perchance to Dream: Have you ever fallen asleep on the job? I have. Fortunately, I wasn’t in la-la land while being responsible for flying a plane, or guiding it to a landing. Or driving a truck on an interstate highway. Or running a lathe or any heavy duty machinery. Or, like Vice President Joe Biden the other day, listening to President Obama tell everyone I’d be in charge of reconciling the differences between the Democratic and Republican visions of our future.

No, when I would fall asleep on the job I’d be sitting at my desk, usually after lunch around 2 or 3 pm, staring into a computer terminal, eyes getting heavier and heavier. When I would fall asleep the most damage I could do was click on a mouse and delete a story. But the sudden movement of the mouse would usually wake me up. Rats!

We’re a nation of sleep-deprived. I won’t recount my bouts with sleeping on the job. You can read it again here: http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2010/02/nap-time.html

I’m always amazed we don’t see more people nodding off when any president is speaking before Congress or some other august body. Nice to know I have what it takes to be vice president of the United States.

A Thoughtful Gathering

Passover begins Monday night with the first Seder, a time when Jews the world over gather to boast about their participation in one of at least three events: the shortest reading of the Haggadah on record; the longest reading of the Haggadah; or attendance at the largest Seder they’ve ever been to.

The annual communion of the clan (more than any other holiday, secular or religious, Passover brings Jews back to the tribal table), the Seder once was a highly structured ritual. Today, however, it has become more personalized for many households, with their own texts and innovative practices, yet all retain the core story of the struggle for human rights and freedom.

It is not a moment of tranquility. There are more than enough arguments to last a full year until the next ingathering of the extended family. Some may be profound tensions between parents and siblings, friends and relatives. But most are grounded in whimsy, with more than a dash of love and a sprinkle of nostalgia.

There is, for instance, the debate on who made the best gefilte fish. Or whether soft or hard matzo balls are better. Or whether the horseradish was strong enough to make your eyes burn and nose run or barely worthy of its role to make us remember the cruel life of a slave.

Or whether it is better to have the children steal the Afikomen or have them find it after it has been hidden (sorry, it’s too much to explain to non-Jews the concept of an Afikomen—Google it if you’re interested, which I hope you are).

How much to pay to redeem the Afikomen is a precedent-setting action. The first night’s payout sets the scale for the second night’s Seder. And do you compensate just the child who possesses the Afikomen, or do you extend the largess to the whole brood, with a little extra for the main claimant?

If no young children are present, there’s the taunting demand that the youngest adult read The Four Questions, usually resolved when a kind soul suggests everyone will sing along to relieve the embarrassment.

An old-fashioned Seder, complete from start to finish with the meal separating the two halves of the Haggadah, can take upwards of four hours. Newer versions can clock in at the same length, or longer. It all depends on how many tangential discussions are encouraged in the first half, how many songs are sung in the second.

Through it all, if you’re truly honest with yourself, there are more guests sitting around the table than just those before your eyes. The spirit of your parents, aunts and uncles who have passed away. Siblings and cousins, nieces and nephews, friends, perhaps even your own children, who live in communities too distant to bridge. Though we’re ostensibly gathered to celebrate the emergence of the Israelites from slavery and their birth as a free people, the Seder’s deeper purpose cements individual families, building generation to generation rituals of shared storytelling and memory.